Chapter 6
Maternal Grief
People Affected: mothers of dead children
Type of Emotion: conceptual punishment
Conceptual Trigger: "my child is dead"
Mental Effect: negative
Key Feature: the closer the child was to puberty, the stronger the effect
Involuntary Expression: prolonged frowning
Synonym: sorrow
Type of Emotion: conceptual punishment
Conceptual Trigger: "my child is dead"
Mental Effect: negative
Key Feature: the closer the child was to puberty, the stronger the effect
Involuntary Expression: prolonged frowning
Synonym: sorrow
Purpose
Maternal grief encourages mothers to protect their children.
Maternal love and maternal grief are different.
Maternal love lasts 33 months. The threat of maternal grief lasts forever. Mothers do not nag their older children because they love them. Mothers nag them to avoid grief.
Maternal love encourages maximum effort. Maternal grief encourages minimum effort. A mother feels more maternal love if she makes her child happier. A mother does not reduce the threat of maternal grief if she makes a safe child safer. Maternal grief encourages minimum effort to maximize the number of children mothers give birth to. The more time mothers spend protecting older children, the fewer children they have.
Maternal love encourages keeping a child happy. Maternal grief encourages keeping a child alive. Mothers do not vaccinate their children to make them happy. Mothers vaccinate children to keep them alive.
Conceptual Trigger
Maternal grief is triggered by a child’s death, whether the mother could have prevented it or not. This encourages mothers to treat all death as preventable. Mothers want to know if power lines cause leukemia.
Like all conceptions, maternal grief can be triggered by imagining its conceptual trigger. Mothers trigger imagined grief when they lose their child in a shopping mall. The relief they feel when they find their missing child is the end of imagined grief.
Imagined grief is more important than actual grief. Actual grief only affects the mothers of dead children. Imagined grief affects all mothers. The prolonged frowning triggered by maternal grief helps other mothers imagine grief’s negative effect.
Maternal grief encourages mothers to protect their children.
Maternal love and maternal grief are different.
Maternal love lasts 33 months. The threat of maternal grief lasts forever. Mothers do not nag their older children because they love them. Mothers nag them to avoid grief.
Maternal love encourages maximum effort. Maternal grief encourages minimum effort. A mother feels more maternal love if she makes her child happier. A mother does not reduce the threat of maternal grief if she makes a safe child safer. Maternal grief encourages minimum effort to maximize the number of children mothers give birth to. The more time mothers spend protecting older children, the fewer children they have.
Maternal love encourages keeping a child happy. Maternal grief encourages keeping a child alive. Mothers do not vaccinate their children to make them happy. Mothers vaccinate children to keep them alive.
Conceptual Trigger
Maternal grief is triggered by a child’s death, whether the mother could have prevented it or not. This encourages mothers to treat all death as preventable. Mothers want to know if power lines cause leukemia.
Like all conceptions, maternal grief can be triggered by imagining its conceptual trigger. Mothers trigger imagined grief when they lose their child in a shopping mall. The relief they feel when they find their missing child is the end of imagined grief.
Imagined grief is more important than actual grief. Actual grief only affects the mothers of dead children. Imagined grief affects all mothers. The prolonged frowning triggered by maternal grief helps other mothers imagine grief’s negative effect.
Maternal grief varies with a child’s death age. The closer a child was to puberty, the stronger the negative effect. Mothers whose children die as teenagers feel the strongest grief.
Grief varies with a child’s reproductive value. The closer a child is to puberty, the higher its reproductive value. A 16 year old has survived childhood and still has 100% of its reproductive capacity. Human Grief: Is its Intensity Related to the Reproductive Value of the Deceased? is a study led by Charles Crawford of Simon Fraser University that probed the relationship between grief and death age.
Maternal grief causes mothers to favor their first born over other children. First born children are usually the closest to puberty and therefore trigger the strongest grief if they die.
Other Species
Species feel maternal grief if mothers protect their offspring. Crocodiles feel maternal grief, but not maternal love. Crocodile mothers do not feed their young, but they do protect them by gingerly holding them in their jaws when a threat lurks.
Grief varies with a child’s reproductive value. The closer a child is to puberty, the higher its reproductive value. A 16 year old has survived childhood and still has 100% of its reproductive capacity. Human Grief: Is its Intensity Related to the Reproductive Value of the Deceased? is a study led by Charles Crawford of Simon Fraser University that probed the relationship between grief and death age.
Maternal grief causes mothers to favor their first born over other children. First born children are usually the closest to puberty and therefore trigger the strongest grief if they die.
Other Species
Species feel maternal grief if mothers protect their offspring. Crocodiles feel maternal grief, but not maternal love. Crocodile mothers do not feed their young, but they do protect them by gingerly holding them in their jaws when a threat lurks.
Happiness Dissected is a more practical version of The Origin of Emotions.